They learned from their mistakes and corrected course, immediately after Mao. But you still haven't noticed? They started changing course in 1978 under Deng to ease towards a market economy, and have continued in that direction until today where China is now not much different from Western countries. There are state owned enterprises (same as most Western countries) and there are government regulators (same as most Western countries). China actually had to hold off some reforms in order to counter Trump's trade war. Xi is somewhat less reformist than Deng was, and I'm not promoting their particular system -- all governments suck. But to always harken back to the mostly environmentally-caused famine (made worse by communism negative affect on productivity) is pretty weak.